What Foreigners Need To Know About America From A To Z: How to understand crazy American culture, people, government, business, language and more Reviewed By David W. Menefee of Bookpleasures.com

David W. Menefee

Reviewer
David W. Menefee: David is a Pulitzer nominated American author,
ghost writer, screenwriter, book editor, and film historian. David’s
career began as a writer and marketing representative for the Dallas
Times Herald
and the Dallas
Morning News.
His books have appeared under various imprints and in a variety of
categories, such as biography, travel, historical fiction, mysteries,
and romance. Two books by David were named among the 2011 Top 10
Silent Film Books of the Year: Wally:
The True Wallace Reid Story, and
The
Rise and Fall of Lou-Tellegen.
His most recent releases include Sweet
Memories
and the 1950s romance trilogy, Can't
Help Falling in Love,
Come
Away to Paradise,
and Catch
a Falling Star
(with co-author Carol Dunitz). David lives in Dallas, Texas, USA.

The
divides separating ages, cultures, religions, and races could largely
be eliminated and a utopian civilization could be finally achieved if
we simply understood each other, but we’re not all working off the
same page. Lance Johnson has produced the ultimate guide for bringing
about a universal understanding between the millions of people
living, working, and loving inside the United States.

Nothing
could be worse than nudging a naïve neophyte into the magnificent
melting pot known as America.
This book could be their salvation, but beware of the misleading
title. You might think that What
Foreigners Need to Know About America from A to Zcontains
nothing but factoids for foreigners, but you need look no further
than yourself and those within your intimate circle of friends to
realize that our entire population today woefully lacks a perception
of etiquette, knowledge of this country’s heritage, awareness of
culture, know-how about business, and comprehension of language. We
need alertness to TLC: Tradition, Legacy, and Custom. This monumental
book holds the missing key to collective comprehension.

The
566-page book weighs as much as a big city telephone book, and you
cannot absorb the whole in one reading (I tried), but thankfully,
Johnson has divided the digest into four sections:

America’s
Heritage:the
dreams that immigrants brought from the four winds, and the
government, geography, history, law, religions, and measurements that
resulted.

America’s
Business:models,
unions, banking, customs and conduct, owning a business, how to get a
job, and paying taxes.

America’s
Language:how
to talk and write correcting, slang, and tonality.

Back
matter contains appendices for:

Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address

Colleges
with Largest Percentage of International Students

Sample
Income Tax Form 1040

Pulitzer
Prize-winning books

Academy
Awards for Best Picture

The
Famous 1897 New York Sun article “Yes, Virginia, There Is a
Santa Clause”

A
list of the current 50 United States

A
comprehensive 100-question Quiz on US Government

You
might wonder what the above topics have to do with understanding
Americans, but these subjects fuse together the follies, foibles, and
fundamentals that formed this country. The author profusely
illustrates his text with more than 650 photos, maps, charts, and
illustrations. His writing style embraces excellent grammar,
punctuation, sentence structure, and spelling. Each of the four main
sections is also available as a separate paperback edition. Those
Volumes 1-4 allow a reader to hone in on areas they may feel that
they most need to study, but the huge multi-volume edition can be
found in both paperback and Kindle book editions. Study
remains the keyword here, because the author outlays everything
everyone needs to learn about living, working, socializing, and doing
business in America. A comprehensive Index makes referring back to
some detail a snap. Throughout the book, the author interjects
"hints" that offer his personal pointers about how to
further understand a given topic, not unlike having your best friend
nudge you and whisper a tip that completely clarifies your
understanding.

The
book should be last course all high school students must pass before
graduating, compulsory for earning a college diploma, mandatory for
every management trainee, and a required refresher for all senior
citizens before beginning to collect Social Security. Our nation
would be vastly improved if all adults were following the same
guiding principles.

What
Foreigners Need to Know About America from A to Z pulls
together between two covers a richly researched, all-inclusive
panorama of America’s
heritage, culture, business, and language. If this country ever
ceases to exist, I hope this book survives as a testament to the
truth that there was once a land where life’s leading lights shown
at their brightest on a candelabra forged from the iron of the ages.
Until that dark day, Lance Johnson has provided us with a workbook
for winning that has been struck from those same elements and should
be on your gift list for friends setting up in America for the first
time, any student emerging from the classroom into the jungle of
life, and all the rest of us who have forgotten the beauty of the
forest because of the tangle of trees.

Lance
Johnson has an Ivy League graduate business degree and has studied at
OxfordUniversityin
England. He has traveled through 81 countries, served as manager of
an international consulting firm, and appeared in many movies, stage
plays, and commercials.